The Dream Within A Dream
by abstraction
Summary: Beyond the forest, and the sea. The wolf will wait for thee.   He wants to show her the gardens, but he warns her to stay out of the forest. "The trees," he says a little uneasily, "have a bit of personality."   Prose, with serious dream imagery.


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Her hand, unfurled—politely, like a flower she sometimes imagines—is reaching for a doorknob, which is attached to a door, that opens to a place she does not know. She thought it had been sunny, but now that she concentrates, she sees that it has been growing ever darker, her sky somehow a deep purple, and any light spaces thrown into relief by a curl of yellow. She holds the doorknob, heavy and rough in her hands, feels even the small pricks of rust which have dusted its iron body. _A storm,_ she says to it, not speaking.

She is in an attic. She is suddenly unsure how, exactly, she came to be in the attic—did she go up the stairs? Yes, she must have, and she struggles to remember them, and then she faintly does: narrow and dark, wooden echoing creaks muffled by a dust-laden carpet. She looks down at her feet, and yes, she does remember now, her shoes are covered in it—in dust. She looks behind her and sees that she has tracked dirt into the room.

There is a flutter of fear in her stomach. Would he be angry? That she has brought all this earth into his home? It's hard for her to think. Everything is so dark, but beyond an ancient chest she can see the slight glimmer of a window. The view is half-obscured by heavy drapes, velvety deep hues worn from centuries of stillness. No one has been here in a very long time. Then why would she look for him here? There must be so many doors, so why did she choose to go to the attic? She feels angry with herself, disappointed that she could not see things so clearly when she had been outside, walking up to the house.

She can hear wolves cry outside, somewhere beyond the forest. If she hurries, she can leave before they find her.

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Somewhere in the tall grasses, she has lost him. He was just here, and she quells the beginning of panic, and calls for him: "Doctor! _Doctor!_" There is a small rustle coming from somewhere to the right of her. She hears his laugh drifting through the green stalks, swaying now from a breeze. She has to squint from the sun, burning brightly even when she closes her eyes, fiery red. "Rose!" he calls out.

She swims through the grasses, making space for her body to move. She follows the sound of his voice and finds herself in a clearing. The long meadow dies out slowly, rocks peppering the terrain the further she looks, and in the distance she can see the swells of rocks creating small mountains. And something else, something she should know.

"Do I hear—?"

"The ocean!" he laughs, ecstatic that she has found him. "It took you so long! Where have you been?"

She skips over to him, happy with the sun on her back, and in her hair. She feels the slight damp of sweat on her forehead and on the back of her neck, but it's a good feeling. "I only left a moment ago!" she exclaims, smiling. She slides her arms through his and hugs him.

"Oh, my Rose," he says, resting his cheek on the top of her head. He grips her tightly, and his breath fans small tendrils of her blonde hair outward into the air. He watches them fall back to her, then out again as he exhales. "But it's been much more than a moment."

The safety, the warmth she has been feeling begins to fade. She feels the flush in her neck begin to die. She breathes into his jacket, her lips brushing against the cloth. When she speaks, it grows warm and damp. "What do you mean?"

The wind is rushing past them, and it's hard for her to stand—he's the only thing keeping her up. Beyond them the ocean roars, tumultuous. She can feel the cold begin to seep into her trainers. A cloud is passing over the sun, and it shades everything in that moment—everything is gray, even the tall grasses (so far away now, gone in the blink of an eye) which had burned with vibrance so shortly before. Still holding onto him, she glances down. Her feet are bare, the waves from the shoreline covering them, uncovering them. Covering them, uncovering them. Always disappearing.

"But really," she says into his chest, "it was only a minute." He lets go of her.

She looks up, and she is staring at the shore. She can see a figure there, lifting up it's hand as if to signal her. The more she stares the more she can make out his outline, and can almost imagine the thin stripes running down his suit. She remains standing, and the sea swallows her whole.

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She drifts listlessly awake. She doesn't open her eyes, just lets the sleep settle into her bones, and her joints. Her covers are warm and she feels perfect, and safe. She doesn't want to open her eyes, so she presses her face into her pillow and lies there, motionless, wishing for unconsciousness. Her mind departs for a moment, then returns. She sighs, lifts herself up, still in the haven of darkness her eyelids provide. Sleep is thick in her mouth, she can feel the weight of it in her tongue, behind her teeth. Her jaw aches.

Her eyes open slowly. She squints in the low light of the room. She lets them adjust, waiting for the small pieces of waking to find the rest of her body, bringing them slowly to life. She slides her legs over the side of the bed, and her feet touch the floor. She looks down at them and has a tiny moment of confusion—didn't she need to wash them? She shakes her head, rubs the sleep from her eyes, and stands. She feels like she is searching for a word, something to describe what she woke from. What _did_ she wake from? A dream, she thinks.

She is mistaken. A dream within a dream.

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There is a small ring of planets, light years away from a major star system, and the only sun they possess is a dark new star, plum and ochre. The sky is a deep maroon. He wants to show her the gardens, but he warns her to stay out of the forest. "The trees," he says a little uneasily, "have a bit of personality." She's not sure what he means by that so she laughs it away, a wave of her hand denoting its inconsequence. She doesn't realize, but she reacts this way to most unsettling things, and he will smile to himself when she isn't looking.

"So!" she says, clapping her hands. "To the gardens!"

She does a running skip forward, finding the cold air refreshing. Her scarf scratches softly against her neck, and her hair flies carelessly from under it's light weight. He chuckles, catches up to her and leans into her in order to tell her about where they were. He loves that she loves to learn. She loves that he loves to teach her. They are giddy, smiling with their future so clearly in front of them. But there are many futures. And from beyond the horizon, the wind is picking up.

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The gardens don't go _directly_ as planned, but he's hardly one to blame.

"I blame this on you!" she yells to him as they run toward the TARDIS. He steers toward her, grabs her hand as they push onward. They glance at each other as they run, and grin. She feels fear, but also exhilaration. Unbidden, a laugh escapes her, and he stares at her. He laughs too. She's actually, fully laughing now, gasping for breath as they run and she can feel the hot sting of a cramp in her side. She can't breathe but she almost doesn't care. It's just so funny. Everything—everything is just so perfect and dangerous and fun and they are running for their lives but she is happy.

She is so happy.

Over the next hill, the TARDIS nestles in a patch of wine-colored flowers, vaguely sunflower-looking. But as they sprint down the hill, laughing with themselves and with each other, it begins to shift. The TARDIS stretches and fades. How strange, she thinks, and then laughs. When they get to the bottom of the hill, by the patch of the blood sunflowers, the TARDIS is no longer the TARDIS— it's a house. Old as time, and so many stories, she hardly thinks to count. There is a tower in the center, with rooms that appear, then disappear. Fading in and out of existence. Always disappearing.

The Doctor stares, frightened at his home. "Rose... Rose, this isn't right."

Her smile fades. "What? What do you mean? We made it! We're safe."

He turns to her in confusion. "Rose, she left. The TARDIS _left_!"

He waits for her to understand the gravity of this. They are trapped, here on this small planet, in a system untouched by any civilization, with the creatures from the forest. She only giggles at him.

"But she hasn't left, Doctor. She's just a house now. Come now," she says, walking toward the door. It feels familiar. A slight sort of déjà vu, but she shakes it off. He didn't understand, and she had to help him.

"Rose. Rose, wait."

She turns back to him, smiling, with her hand on the doorknob. "Coming or not?"

"Rose, _listen_—"

She disappears. Always disappearing.

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She walks straight toward the staircase, as if her body has been here before. But she stops herself, weighs the feeling in her stomach. It can't be this way, she thinks. She looks around the entry room. There are so many other doors.

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Outside, the Doctor has gone. Wind pours from the forest that lies past the house. Far off, there is a figure silhouetted on the crest of a hill.

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"Hmm," she says to the pool. There is a dark shape near the bottom, but she can't make it out. The water distorts too much, and its dark as it is. "Perhaps it is a piece of the sea," she says out loud, apropos of nothing. It doesn't echo, merely floats against the corners of the room before sinking through the walls. Her shoes squeak slightly against the tile floor as she walks the length of the pool, the dark shape following a few feet behind her. She knows the answer lies through the next door.

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The air is damp and heavy. "Ah," she says. "I've found the basement." It is enormous, cluttered. Boxes stack atop one another, leaning dangerously to the side. Books are disheveled, lying open or torn apart on almost every surface. It's especially crowded toward the back corner, tables stacked on chairs stacked on dressers and creating an impassable wall. She chuckles to herself. If only everything was this easy.

She picks her way through the debris. There is a tower of old magazines beside a rickety tent, illuminated from within. She wants to look inside but she hears noise from behind the wall where all the furniture lies. She treads carefully, and climbs just as carefully on the odds and ends which lead to the fortress of wooden behemoths. But she is good at climbing, and could beat all the boys that challenged her at school, on the rope swings or the jungle gym. She makes her way upwards, her stance teetering—one foot on a slanted dresser, the other on an unstable chair seat. She can press her ear to the wall, and she does. Her eyes close, and she listens as hard as she can. Moans— and creaking. A rhythmic click, click, click of wood on wood and a pale, delighted scream. Her eyes widen, and she gasps, quickly moving away from the sounds—and falls. She braces herself to feel the hard slam of the floor, but she just keeps falling. Wind rushes upwards, as if she has jumped from something much taller than this house. A mountain. Or a cliff.

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Rose laughs, and presses her hand to the wall. "You make a very strange house, you know."

She had landed softly on her feet after hovering inches above the ground for a stomach-fluttering moment. And when she went to look through the window, she was in a room within the tower.

She begins feeling as if she has outstayed her welcome. There is a press of time urging her forward. "What was I looking for again, old thing?" she says to no one.

Of the three doors that stand in the walls of the room, only one opens.

"Ah! Thanks very much."

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She is in an attic. She is suddenly unsure how, exactly, she came to be there—did she go up the stairs?

No, she remembers now. Things have been crowding her—thoughts, or memories. She passed many things to find this place. She had strayed through the kitchen, into a gravity-defying greenhouse. She'd stepped in one of the planting pots on accident, and now she had soil all over her shoes. She'd had to walk through what she thought was a library, a maze of bookshelves she longed to explore, but pushed past. And there were stairs, the first set of stairs she had seen in the whole house.

But it was so dark in here—she could hardly see, and the howling from outside was getting louder. Beyond a giant chest, a window glimmered, and she began toward it, like a flower searching for sun. Her leg hits the corner of the chest and she falls forward, arms sprawled. A pain below her knee was warming, getting warmer, hotter, more intense. She pulls herself up, sits herself in front of the chest. "Stupid bloody thing," she says with a growl, looking at the blood beginning to swell past her skin.

The chest creaks, so slightly she dismisses it. But again, and again, the wood expands and cries, creaks that flood the room with their might. Like the crack of thunder. She is frightened, perhaps for the first time since entering this place and her fingers tremble as they move toward the latch on the chest. "Is this it?" she whispers. Her fingers touch the metal holding the lid, and the room explodes.

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Light.

Burning.

Everything. _Everything_.

Howling.

She screams.

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The Doctor is holding her. She is half in his lap, and he is holding her as gently and as tightly as he can manage. Her eyes hurt. Her head—her _head_. She wants to scream but all she can manage is a small slip of breath.

"Rose," he says. "Rose, listen, you're okay. You—you went trans-plane traveling."

"My head," she whispers, her eyes squeezing shut.

Her eyes open, and the sun is too bright. She was expecting a red sky, for some reason.

She struggles to sit up properly. The Doctor pulls her up and backward, so she is leaning against his chest. "What happened?"

"The universe has many alternate versions of itself, like you know. But a single dimension has layers and layers ad infinitum—planes of existence. And you just crossed one."

"The fuck did I do that for?" she manages.

He barks a short laugh at her profanity. "There was a pollen in the garden."

"Are you saying I had allergies?"

"No," he laughs. "No, Rose, it altered the chemicals of your brain. And I'm sorry. I truly am, I should have known."

He has grown somber, and she can almost feel a weight pressing down on him, a behemoth of guilt, and anger. Her eyes sting.

"S'alright," she says.

"You could have _died_."

She chuckles softly. "I can't die. I've got a wolf on my side."

The Doctor, behind her, stills. "What?" he breathes.

She can feel tears in her eyes. Her head hurts. She wants to say something to comfort him, but everything has stopped making sense. She stares at her leg and watches the cut heal. A breeze cools the sweat from her face, but in it she can see tiny particles, she _is_ tiny particles, and she can see where they are going, and where they have been. She feels herself moving—the Doctor has turned her so he can see her face. She stares at him, and she can see all of him—thin, translucent images layer themselves over his face. His faces. So many of them. She laughs, because she can see his hair, white and black and gray and brown and gold, all at once, everything at once. "Like doors," she says, nonsensically.

"What?"

"So many of them... you opened one for me."

"Rose," he says desperately, and his hands frame her face, push her hair away, travel over her cheekbones, over her brow, everywhere.

His fingers splay on each side of her face, her temples.

"_No_."

"Yeah," she laughs.

"I got rid of it," he grits.

The pain has begun to subside. The images she can see are faltering, the layers dissipating. Disappearing. Always disappearing. She blinks rapidly, tries to clear her head.

She looks at him softly, her eyes kind, and hazel. His hands drop from her as she brings hers up, holding his face.

"It wasn't yours to get rid of," she says.

"How?"

"Things like that don't stay locked up for long, Doctor. Especially not something like the Bad Wolf."

"So you remember, then? Everything?"

Her hands caress his face once before falling into her lap. "Yeah," she says.

"Right," he says, after a moment. He isn't sure what to do, can't decide where he wants to put his hands. She wants to laugh at his restlessness, his utter uncertainty of how to proceed.

She stands, offers her hand for him. He seems bemused, but takes it. She pulls him up with a laugh.

They are in a clearing. The sun is bright, and there are tall grasses surrounding them, swaying, glowing with color. "Where are we?" she asks.

"It's a neighboring planet. Twin systems. The grasses here give off a sort of electric current, weak enough to tamper with, with the sonic, but not strong enough to do any damage to you."

She nods, and looks out at the sea of green, swaying endlessly until the horizon. She inhales. Exhales.

"So where was I again?"

"Well... kind of inside your own head."

She's surprised, but she doesn't let it show. Her mouth is a straight line as she contemplates what has happened, and what it will mean for her. For them. For their future.

"Ah," is all she says for a while. And something, suddenly, strikes her as odd. "Wait, Doctor—where's the ocean?"

"Ocean?" he says, confused. "There's no ocean on this planet. Just the meadow."

She shrugs, lets the thought pass. It was just something she heard in a dream, she thinks.

But she is mistaken. A dream within a dream.

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Fin.

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End file.
